After the snowy winter, in which temperatures often reached -20°C for days, I was very happy about the first tentative days of summer, even though nature was actually relatively late in coming after the winter...
In August, we went to Gleðiganga, the Pride Parade in Reykjavík. I think this parade has something very special and personal about it that I love every year. So we went to the parade again in 2023 – and this year I had specially "knitted" us in rainbow colors, or rather, my chic little hat was crocheted from the leftover wool from my jacket.
My husband was still there during the volcanic eruption, just before the eruption at Fagradalsfjall stopped...
This fall, we had a very special visitor: a ptarmigan that rested extensively on our patio, wandered around for a long time, and finally left us a few sausages on our patio table as a farewell treat. But no matter – it gave us some beautiful photos! (And no – the ptarmigan didn't become our Christmas roast!)
One last autumn impression from the sea...
And finally, our year ended with two New Year's Eve bonfires here.
Our literary highlight of 2023...
.... was a tip for Joachim B. Schmidt's reading at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The author was born in Switzerland but has lived in Iceland with his family for years. I had heard about his book "Kalmann" before, read about it, or even seen him on TV, but somehow I hadn't yet gotten around to reading it.
My husband met the literary father of "Kalmann" in person in Frankfurt in October 2023, when he read from his second Kalmann book, "Kalmann and the Sleeping Mountain," and talked about the book and its origins.
After this reading, I read "Kalmann" – a book that absolutely captivated me, with its protagonist who is so different from others, with his own unique pace – and at the end, a slight punch in the gut when the "solution" to the murder case was quite surprising (at least for me). I think the book is brilliant and subsequently read (or, you could say, devoured) "Kalmann and the Sleeping Mountain" and "Near the Coast" by Joachim B. Schmidt.
By the way, our son recently came home with a book he'd found for a few euros at a secondhand store, which he thought would definitely be something for us: "A Soldier Sits at the Table." It's also a novel by Joachim B. Schmidt, set in Iceland. So I have something to read again, yay!
My knitting projects 2023
I got quite a bit of knitting done last year. I knitted this pattern from the book "Icelandic Knitting" four times because I found it so wonderful, and also so wonderfully uncomplicated. So here are four of the same pattern in Léttlopi wool, only in different colors – once in purple and shades of gray as a sweater, once in bright green with purple, red, and gold as a cardigan for myself, once in blue, white, and red (the Icelandic national colors) as a lopapeysa for my husband, and finally, at my special request, once again as a cardigan for my sister, this time with black as the base color, a reddish-brown as the second color, and yellow and green for the pattern.
Oh yes - I think all four are simply beautiful!
I also finally managed to knit a lopapeysa for my youngest son, who made it with Viking motifs (also from the book "Icelandic Knitting").
At Christmas, we took family photos of the whole team, all wearing Icelandic sweaters (okay, two of the sweaters were bought, but the others were all hand-knitted!).
My last knitting project for 2023 was (once again) a cat hat. Again, a custom project, this time knitted with double Plötulopi yarn and featuring brown and beige mottled cats.
My culinary discoveries 2023
And finally, since we are on a food blog, here are my personal favorite recipes from 2023:
Once a
vanilla cake that I spontaneously baked here using "on-board ingredients" and which was so delicious that I have had it several times since then, once a very tasty
saltfish pudding with melted butter, bread and salad, then a
Christmas blueberry jam with spices that I simply fell in love with (the recipe is in the current 2024.1 issue of "Magic of the North") and once a
cheese dip with biscuits, with cream cheese, sour cream, grated cheese as well as onions and bacon, I have made this dip many times because we like it so much and it has always been so well received by visitors.
With that in mind - thank you very much for our year 2023!